New York Fairytale
by A.Diamond
Summary: Fifteen years ago, Dean's best friend disappeared under bloody and unsolved cirumstances. He never really gave up hope, but he knows the chances of Cas's safe return, especially after so long, are slim to none. And the last place he expects to find him is in the drunk tank on Christmas Eve.
1. This year's for me and you

**Warnings:** Prostitution, past underage prostitution, drug use, reference to attempted non-con, minor character deaths

* * *

Mary Winchester and her two boys moved to Brooklyn in the middle of the heat wave of '95. Dean, eight years old, angry and scared, was sure he'd never forgive her. But she had two young kids, a husband just killed in the line of duty, and a mortgage in Lawrence that she couldn't afford, so the training sergeant post at the NYPD academy was her best option and she took it.

It was hard on all of them. Little Sammy cried himself to sleep for days, mourning the loss of his father and his friends and the home he was used to, and Dean held him, shushed him, spent all night curled around him protectively. They shared a room, but Dean didn't sleep in his own bed for over a week.

He also didn't talk to Mary for nearly a month.

He talked to Sam, even when Mary was in the room, but he'd shut up and glare a hateful, childish glare whenever she tried to participate in the conversation. Sam tried not to choose sides, but he worshiped the ground his big brother walked on and Mary couldn't blame him for that, even though it broke her heart. At least they had each other.

He talked to Pam, the teenager from a few doors down who, in exchange for five bucks a week, would drag herself out of bed early and watch over him and Sam when Mary had to leave by 5 a.m. for her teaching shift. She'd get them ready for school and walk them down to the bus stop and make sure they got on the right bus, for which Mary would've gladly paid her ten times as much if only she could afford it.

He talked to his teacher, who assured Mary that he seemed to be settling in acceptably despite the bad circumstances. He got along easily with his peers, though in Ms. Finley's judgement he hadn't formed any strong friendships yet.

"Give it time," she told Mary. "He's still sorting himself out."

So she gave him time. She packed his lunch along with Sam's in the predawn hours; and she let him ignore her when she went into the boys' room to kiss them and wish them a good day; and she didn't pester him for details of his day when she picked them up from their daycare and afterschool program and Sam chattered away; and she told him _I love you_ every single day, as many times as she could, because if he ever came back to her he needed to know she'd never stopped.

Mary cried herself to sleep most nights, too, but she didn't have anyone to hold her and tell her it would be okay.

{}

The first thing Dean said to her after weeks of silence was a name.

He'd gone up to the roof for a few hours, because sometimes when he needed fresh air, the small balcony didn't give him enough distance from Mary and Sam working on a puzzle at the kitchen table. He was gone longer than usual, but he'd also just fought with Sam, who'd told him to stop being mean to her, so Mary thought it might be good to let him cool off a bit more.

The top of the elevator shaft stuck up out of the building like a little shack near the center of the roof, and it provided some shade from the stifling summer sun. Dean usually had it to himself, because everyone else wanted to stay inside with their air conditioners, but that day he almost tripped over someone on his way to his favorite spot.

When he went back down to his apartment with another boy in tow and Mary looked up in surprise and asked, "Who's your friend?" she wasn't really expecting an answer, at least not from her son.

But after a moment's uneasy hesitation and a glance at the other boy, Dean looked back at her and said, "Cas."

Cas had to be a year or two older than Dean, at least. He was at least half a foot taller, and his face had less of the roundness of childhood to it. Still young, but bordering on adolescence.

Dean led Cas into the room he shared with Sam and within a few minutes Mary could hear him showing off his small collection of comic books. As they started in on a spirited debate about Batman and Superman, she scooped Sam up before he could run over to join them and set him back on his chair.

"You can play with your brother later. You and I still have to put together these dinosaurs!"

{}

Later, when Dean came to the door of his room and asked, mulishly but directly, if Cas could stay for dinner, Mary had to work very hard to hide her relieved tears.

They would be okay. It would be hard, but the worst of it was over. They were going to be okay.

{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

For six years, Dean and Cas could barely be separated. The first year, they spent nearly every waking moment together:

They went together to the bus in the morning, riding side-by-side on a bench near the middle where Cas always let Dean have the window seat, because he was tall enough to see over Dean's head.

They sat together at lunch and secluded themselves away at a corner of the playground at recess to talk or read or playact their adventures. Ms. Finley told Mary at their next meeting that she'd like to see Dean branch out more socially, but wasn't overly worried.

They waited together after school for Mary to pick them up on her way home, even though Cas had bused straight home before meeting Dean. The aunt he lived with was glad to have him out of the apartment more; he'd kept to himself since losing his parents and moving in with her.

That shared loss and displacement might've been what kept them linked so tightly, Mary thought, or maybe they just clicked. Either way, they were good for each other and she'd never stop being grateful to Cas for giving her her son back.

After that first year, followed by a summer spent exclusively in each other's company—mostly up on the roof—disaster struck. At least, disaster in the perspective of an already vulnerable boy who couldn't completely hide how desperately afraid he was of losing anyone else. Cas, two years older than Dean and thus two years ahead of him in school, started to attend the local middle school instead of the elementary school he'd shared with Dean.

Dean sulked for a solid week.

"Come on in," Mary told Cas that Saturday despite Dean's refusal to come out of his bedroom. "Sam and I were about to watch a movie. Would you like to join us?"

 _Robin Hood_ was a favorite of both Winchester boys; if that and Cas's presence, which Mary knew Dean missed despite his tantrum, wasn't enough to draw Dean out, she'd resign herself to not seeing him again until after puberty.

Sure enough, the singing, dancing foxes enticed Dean to join them. He started in his doorway, edging closer to the main room every few minutes, eventually making it to the couch and perching on the armrest as far from Cas as possible. By the end of the movie, though, he had his head pressed to Cas's as they whispered apologies. After, Dean disappeared into his room again—but this time he took Cas with him, and they spent hours catching up on stories from school.

{}

On December 25th, 2001, Cas didn't show up for Christmas breakfast with the Winchesters. Dean bounded up to his aunt's apartment to drag him down "before the pancakes get cold!" Mary heard Dean's screaming when he was still two flights up. She dropped the syrup she'd been carrying to the table and the plastic bottle exploded all over the floor.

"Stay right there!" she yelled at Sam as she raced out. Astra, Pam's mother, was opening her door when Mary ran past. She still had a spare key, so Mary stopped just long enough to ask her to go stay with Sam. "There's a safe under my bed, the code is 2-4-1-1."

Mary hadn't had time to grab her gun, would face whatever was threatening Dean without it, but at least Astra could be ready.

She found Dean in the stairwell, sobbing and trying to push past a concerned neighbor whom Mary only knew on sight, but who was obviously trying to help calm him and find out what was wrong.

"Mom," he choked out. There was blood on his hands.

She dropped to her knees and tugged his wrists towards herself. "Are you hurt? What happened?"

"'S not mine. Ms. Milton's dead. Cas isn't there." Dean struggled to get even those brief sentences out, starting to shake to pieces in her grip.

She wanted nothing more than to bundle him away, get him clean and warm and comforted, but she had something even more important to do first. She sent him off back to their apartment with orders to have Astra call the police, then she continued up the stairs.

A crowd had gathered around the Milton apartment, the other families from their hallway who'd been alerted—in some cases, clearly awakened—by Dean's yelling.

Later, as the investigation into Lilith Milton's murder and her nephew's disappearance stretched on without answer, they would all claim to have heard nothing suspicious overnight. Lilith had been sliced to ribbons, but no one had heard her scream. A body—dead or unconscious, it was impossible to tell—had been dragged by the torso, its feet leaving a trail through her blood ended just outside the door, but no one's celebrations or sleep had been disturbed.

Despite the best efforts of New York's finest, including Mary and officers she'd personally trained, they had no leads. The case went cold and neither Lilith's killer nor sixteen-year-old Cas were ever found.

{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

"Brought you another present," Dean tells the officer at the booking desk with a grin, ignoring the complaining grumble from the drunk and disorderly sagging at his side. "Happy Hanukkah."

Aaron rolls his eyes and stands to help Dean haul-more-than-walk the guy down the hallway toward the pen. "We've been over this, Dean. Just because there are eight nights doesn't mean I need or want eight in-custodies from you. If you keep it up, we're gonna run out of space before midnight and then what'll we do when last call hits?"

Dean just whistles as they pass through a keycard activated door, then another. It's Christmas Eve and nothing's going to drag him down. Not Aaron's mostly for show grumpiness, not working a twelve hour shift to cover people taking the night off, and not the fact that his arrest just decided to vomit all over Dean's shiny black boots.

Some people hate working Christmas because it takes them away from their families and celebrations. (Some people love working Christmas for the same reason.) Others hate it because the dysfunctional, violent families and lonely, belligerent drunks come out in force. It's not unusual to get a few of each a week, more in precincts busier than Dean's, but if it's after about 11 a.m. on a holiday, officers pretty much run from one to the next non-stop until the next morning.

Dean usually volunteers to work Christmas, even though he has family in the area and loves celebrating the holiday with them, because he doesn't mind as much as some of the other guys. He grew up in a police household. He's used to working around shift schedules when it comes to family events. As a training sergeant, his mom usually got evenings and holidays off, but there were a few years when money was tight and she'd signed up for as many overtime shifts as they'd let her. So he and Sam would stay with their babysitter Pam and her mom, then celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever in the morning when Mary got home.

They'd had to get even more flexible when Dean started on the job, sometimes scheduling their gatherings a couple days before or after the actual holiday so that both of them could make it. But since Mary retired it's been easier again, and the Winchesters have a standing date for breakfast on Christmas morning. Sam and Sarah usually spend Christmas Eve with Mary, too, and sleep at her apartment so they don't have to make the trip from Manhattan in the morning.

Aaron's been Dean's voluntary Christmas Eve companion the last couple of years, since he doesn't give a shit about Christmas. This year, with the first night of Hanukkah falling on December 24th, Aaron actually wanted the night off; but he was on the schedule and doesn't have the seniority to take it as vacation. So he's been grumpy and Dean's been cheerfully incorrigible at him.

It's good to have friends.

Together they get the guy poured into the drunk tank, then Dean gets called out for another DV before he can even finish the paperwork.

{}

A few hours later, Dean swings back by the booking desk to see if any of his folks have sobered up enough to be released. He'll send them home in a cab, they'll get a cite in the mail with a court date, and Aaron will get his jail space back. Everyone's happy, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, etc.

Except Aaron doesn't notice Dean at first, looking back and forth between a piece of paper in his hand and the computer screen in front of him. His face scrunches in that particular way of his that means either disbelief or irritation (so Dean sees a lot of it). When he finally does catch sight of Dean, mostly due to Dean ignoring the concept of personal space and coming around the desk to try and see what's got his attention, he spins around to face Dean and his eyebrows shoot up.

"Ho-lee shit," says Aaron.

Dean stops trying to read the screen and looks at Aaron instead. "Whatcha got?"

"Okay, get this." Aaron settles into his storytelling pose, hands out and fingers spread wide, and Dean gets comfortable on the edge of the desk. Aaron can take a while to get to the point once he gets going, but his descriptions and tangents are entertaining enough that Dean doesn't mind.

"Isaac stumbled into that fight, right? An hour or two back?"

Dean nods; he heard Isaac asking for backup to help with a six or seven person brawl, but he wasn't nearby at the time and the situation was resolved pretty quickly once a couple of closer officers showed up. That's all he knows about it so far, and he says as much. Aaron will gladly fill him in on the gossip.

"Turns out the whole cluster started when the group of drunk assholes came upon a male prostitute finishing his business and decided they wanted it for free, in the spirit of the holiday." He says the last with heavy irony and a roll of his eyes.

"Isaac rolled up before things got too bloody, but you can imagine how they took to a druggie hooker turning them down. Of course, once Isaac pulls off the guy punching him, hooker doesn't want to cooperate. Refuses medical, gives a bunch of fake names, says he won't testify, tells us to fuck off. You know the drill.

"He's high as fuck, he's got a hell of a shiner and baggie of pills, and he has the fucking mouth to tell Isaac and Victor that they're holding up his business."

Dean winces. "Vic would not take that well."

"Yeah, no shit. Which is why we've got him sitting in one-oh-one across from the other guys in the tank, on obstruction and possession."

Dean makes a face. He kind of gets it, but... "He's assaulted, almost raped, and we arrest him? That's shitty, and Vic's not usually shitty."

"Sounds bad," Aaron agrees, "but he's gonna drop the charges. This way the guy gets a warm meal and somewhere to sleep, and we get to fingerprint him for an ID. AFIS just came back"—Aaron picks up the paper again and shakes it—"and I repeat: holy shit."

"Holy shit _what_? Wanted serial killer? Child star gone wrong? Someone we know's long lost twin?"

"Long lost something. No arrests, no warrants—which is actually pretty impressive for someone who's been using and being used as long as he apparently has. No, his prints are on file from a missing person report outta our precinct. Apparently we've been looking for this guy since '01."

Dean's heart seizes in his chest, but Aaron doesn't notice.

"He's also listed as a person of interest in an open murder case from the same time—"

"Cas," Dean breathes. It turns out to be a good thing he's sitting on Aaron's desk, because he doesn't think his legs could hold him right now.

Aaron stops, caught off guard, and asks, "What?" Then he processes and his face gets troubled again as he double checks against the screen. "Cas? Is that short for Castiel Milton, because..."

Whatever else he says, Dean doesn't hear it over the pulse pounding in his ears. He's already bolting to the cells, trying to push through the doors faster than the locks can disengage.

He does hear the jeering before he gets through the second door, "whore" and "faggot" every other word but they shut up when he bursts in so forcefully that the door ricochets against the wall. He ignores the bunch in the large holding pen and makes a beeline for the solitary cell.

The man in it watches Dean approach, silent and skeptical. Legs folded under him in a position Dean can't imagine being comfortable, he perches on the far end of the cot and looks at Dean like he's bracing for the worst by refusing to care about it. It makes him look small, though his malnourished addict frame might also contribute to that. Beneath a mess of greasy dark hair, the left side of his face is discolored with a large patch of bruising and two or three days of stubble shadow the rest.

He's a far cry from the boy on the cusp of manhood Dean remembers, but his eyes are just as blue.

Dean can't find his voice for long enough, and probably looks stupidly stunned enough, that the suspicion on Cas's face slips into confusion. But not recognition, and that hurts almost as much as seeing Cas like this. Then he realizes that Cas probably doesn't recognize him for the same reason that Cas ended up here, and that hurts most of all.

"Emmanuel Allen," Cas says as the moment stretches on, eyes darting to something behind Dean and coming back.

It's enough to shake Dean's tongue loose. "What?"

"You want a name, right? You guys printed me and came up with nothing, because I'm not in the system. So you're trying again."

"No." Dean's voice is tight; it feels like it's tearing straight out of his chest instead of his throat, but he gets the words out. "No, you are in the system. And if we ran your DNA, that'd be in the system, too."

Cas rolls his eyes, relaxed against the wall of the cell. "You're lying. I've never been arrested."

Dean wraps his hand around one of the bars, because he can't wrap his arms around Cas, and leans his head against it. "That might be true," he says softly, "but Mom went over every inch of your room to get fingerprints and hair samples so we could find you, Cas."

Dean didn't hear Aaron following him in, but he's not surprised to hear him at his back, whistling low and breathing out, "Holy shit."

{}

Cas is wordless as Dean lets him into one of the interview rooms down the hall from the cell. His face doesn't give anything away, either; it went blank as soon as Dean said his name and hasn't twitched since. Dean's pretty sure Cas knows who he is now, and the deliberate lack of reaction is getting to him. He reminds himself that it's bound to be harder on Cas than it is on him, and it's already really hard on him.

For all that he's spent fifteen years hoping for this moment, he doesn't know what to do with it.

(And if he wasn't hoping for _exactly_ this moment, with Cas hurt and high and having spent who knows how many years selling himself, well. After the first few years, after he grew up a little, he learned to temper his expectations. Cas is alive, Cas is mostly whole, and he can work with that.)

Cas sits in the chair Dean pulls out for him, flicks his eyes to the camera (off) and the audio recorder (off), then settles his gaze on the closed door even when Dean drags a chair around to sit a few feet away from him. Dean's breaking all sorts of safety standards and doesn't give a fuck, because— _Cas_.

That's all he can think of, the thing that keeps running through his mind, so he says it: "Cas."

Turned away from him, Cas takes a breath so deep Dean can hear it. It raises his shoulders and they stay lifted even when he exhales just as audibly, steeled for whatever it is he's about to do or say. Dean waits for it.

He almost wishes he hadn't, that he'd found a way to start this conversation because when Cas twists to face him, it's with a broken crack of a smirk that he parts with his tongue, taking his time to drag it over his lips before sucking the lower one under his teeth. It pops back out, glistening and pale, when he grins.

His eyes are bright.

"People usually have to pay me double for roleplay, but it's Christmas, and it's not like I've got any better prospects while you keep me locked up here, so sure. If you're gonna let me out after, I can be Cas—"

"I know it's you, cut the bullshit."

Dean wanted to do this gently, he really did. For his own sake just as much as Cas's. But the shock is starting to wear off and relief is giving way to an ache in his chest that's nearly as strong as when Cas went missing; a renewed sense of loss. Because hearing Aaron and the drunks in the tank call him what he is—prostitute, hooker, whore—is different than having him act like one to Dean.

His harsh interruption actually seems to relax Cas, who coughs out a laugh and looks, for a moment, familiar again.

"Dean, Dean, Dean." His voice is low and almost fond. "I'm nothing but bullshit."

Dean just barely keeps from throwing himself bodily at Cas and ugly crying all over him, while simultaneously smacking some answers out of him: who killed his aunt, what happened to him that night, where's he been since then.

Cas must read at least some of that on his face, because he preempts it. "So, you're a cop now."

"Yeah."

"Of course you are. You always said you would be. Taking after your mom and dad, the family business. Right?"

It feels like a trap. "Right," Dean says anyway.

"Well, same with me. Lilith was a whore with a drug problem and here I am in all my glory."

Dean might as well be fourteen again, covered in a dead woman's blood with his best friend ripped away from him without warning. His world is shattering all around him and all he can do is cling desperately to the pieces. But he only met Lilith a handful of times, mostly when he was younger than ten. Cas never let him into their apartment.

But Cas had been fine. Even if Dean might've been too young and stupid to pick up on the signs, his mom never should've missed it. Except Mary was always exhausted, a stressful job and two kids and Dean doesn't even know what else she was dealing with throughout.

He's not sure there are any pieces of his childhood reality left when he asks, voice breaking a little, "When did you start?"

"Around thirteen. Hair on the field, you know." Cas's smile is still a twist of bitterness, but he says it with a casual, uncaring tone that sets Dean's hackles up as much as the information.

He remembers Cas's thirteenth birthday. Mary baked him a cake from a box and Dean got him some dumb toy car or another. He spent the whole day with them, more or less, and it was—Dean thought it was good.

But during that year Cas also started high school, and sometimes he was too busy with homework to hang out with Dean in the afternoons. Sometimes Dean would go to Cas's to invite him down for dinner and no one would answer the door, even though he heard the TV going.

Once, laying out on the roof despite the cold of winter making the air biting around them, Cas stopped in the middle of a story about his history teacher and started crying. He flinched away when Dean tried to hug him like he would do for Sammy, curling into a ball as his tears turned to shuddering sobs. Dean stayed with him, unsure what else to do, and eventually Cas calmed down and told Dean something about his parents.

Looking back, with hindsight helped by this new knowledge, Dean thinks he was fucking dumb and useless even for a kid.

There are a lot of things Dean wants to say—apologizing, asking why Cas didn't come to them, getting names and details so he can hunt down every last one of them—but none of it will help. So he says, "Fuck," and he stares at Cas with the same wide eyes as when he was a lost little eight-year-old, angry at the world and hurting for the first time.

Cas shrugs it off. "Life's shit, that's not news."

This particular version of life being shit is, at least to Dean, and he's man enough to admit that he's not handling it particularly well. He should ask about Lilith's killer, about Cas's own apparent kidnapping and what happened to him after. Where he's been for the past fifteen years and why he never came back. But he doesn't think he can bear any of that right now, and Cas doesn't seem inclined to bare his soul more than he already has.

Dean takes the opportunity to change the subject and doesn't care if it makes him a coward. It's only temporary.

"Look," he says, "it's Christmas. They're not planning to hold you here past the morning, the arrest is mostly bullshit. You pissed Victor off and he had enough to justify booking you, but he's not gonna push it past that."

Distrust sharpens the edges of Cas's eyes as he asks, "Yeah, and?"

"Mom's still at the old place, and Sam and his wife are there. I'm going over for breakfast after this. You should come with me."

This time, Cas's laugh shakes his whole body and leaves him nearly breathless. "That's the worst idea I've ever heard, and I've seen a kid take two fists with barely any lube for a speedball."

Fighting back something between a wince and a tear, Dean says, "Bad idea or not, you owe us a Christmas breakfast."

It's unfair, maybe even cruel. But so far Cas seems to appreciate that more than coddling, so despite the fact that Dean wants to be gentle and comforting, he has to handle Cas with care or risk losing him. Even if that means acting like he's treating Cas with anything but care.

Cas cracks a grin, almost genuine but a little too lopsided. "Yeah," he says. "All right."

{}

"Come on, he can't have been that good," one of the men complains as Dean leads Cas past the cells and towards the main door instead of locking him back up. It's one of Dean's arrests, not the guys who beat on Cas, so he lets it slide.

Cas, though, turns to wink at the man. "I'm fucking fantastic," says Cas, "but I don't fuck pigs."

That earns a laugh, as does Dean's response: "What a coincidence, because I don't fuck hookers."

From the look Aaron gives him when they get out to the desk, Dean knows he owes his friend not just an explanation, but also a few (dozen) beers.

"I cleared it with Vic," Dean swears. "I'm still on for a few more hours, so can he just hang out here?"

Aaron stares at him like he's grown another head, which is fair but still rude. "Let me get this straight," he says slowly. It's not a great sign.

Aaron looks at Cas a bit uncomfortably, but there's not really any easy way to get privacy short of leaving Cas alone with some valuable and privileged police computer equipment, so he forges ahead. "You want me to keep an eye on your hooker so that you can take him home after you're done with your job of being a goddamn _police officer_."

Cas cracks up.

"It's not like that!" Dean glares at both of them. "I'm taking him to Mom's for breakfast."

"Oh, yeah, that's better."

Dean kicks his chair. "You know damn well why, because you're a nosy fucker who's read the case file like five times by now."

"Only twice," Aaron says, but he does drop the judgmental eyebrow. "Look, are you sure... Are you sure about this?"

To be fair, Dean's making a lot of questionable choices right now. This newly found Cas is a very different person than the Cas he knew, and trusting addicts is something he cautions people against all the time. If they knew he was here, homicide would probably want to interview him so much that they'd be willing to come in in the middle of the night on Christmas-Eve-turned-Christmas-morning. Depending on what Cas took most recently and when, the Winchester Christmas breakfast might get interrupted by nasty and potentially fatal withdrawal symptoms.

If things go wrong, the consequence from him could be anywhere from a mild reprimand to the end of his career.

Fuck it.

"Yeah. I'm sure."

{}

He only gets a couple chances to check in on Cas and Aaron during the rest of his shift, but both times he does, he finds them good-naturedly arguing about random bullshit. Cas seems almost happy and Aaron a lot less mistrustful. It's good.

It almost eases the worry that churns sourly in his gut as the time approaches to, as Aaron put it, take his hooker home.

{}

"I'm not Vivian Ward. Or Cinderella."

When Dean cuts a glance over to Cas he's looking away out the passenger window, but Dean can see the reflection of a smirk on his scruffy face. It's a jaded expression, a look of condescension hiding bitter hopelessness that he's all too used to seeing on the faces that linger in alleys or slouch against buildings at knee level.

It would look out of place on the kid he used to know, but it fits this new Cas. Seems suited to his pronounced cheekbones and sunken eyes, the purple-black splotching his face. Makes him look more seductive than desperate, and that thought scares Dean into looking away. That's not why he's doing this; he's doing it because this is _Cas_.

Cas, who spent so much time in their apartment he might as well have been family. Who Dean's been trying to find again for over half his life. For over twice as long as he actually had with Cas, by now. He's spent fifteen years missing his best friend, worrying about him more as the years went by instead of less because he'd always been a cop's son but it was different when he really knew, feeling a pang every time he visits his mom in the apartment that should have had Cas living above it but didn't. Cas, who he'd been as in love with as an eight, ten, fourteen-year-old boy could be.

He can't say any of that without shattering the careful peace between him and Cas, delicate as fresh-fallen snow and fragile as an antique glass ornament.

So he says, "Yeah, well, I'm not Richard Gere, so I'm not paying you shit," and catches Cas's shoulders relaxing in his peripheral vision. "Also, Cinderella definitely wasn't a whore."

Cas snorts. "Please. You're lying to yourself if you think the wicked stepmother never turned her out."

"Yeah, maybe," Dean allows, "but don't you think someone at the ball would have recognized her if she was selling it?"

They spend the rest of the drive arguing easily about the continuity of Disney movies and what would happen to their princesses in New York. There are a few fraught moments—

("Sleeping Beauty falls hard into dope," says Cas, "because her parents sheltered her from all the dangerous things in the world, but she finds them anyway and she doesn't know the needle's gonna kill her slow. She sobers up for a while, gets herself a charming boyfriend and a roommate, an abused runaway with big dreams, waiting on a big break. But then Snow trusts the wrong stranger and ODs on coke laced with fentanyl, and Aurora figures: fuck it, might as well sleep.")

—but they pass back into humor without remark. Overall, it's a light-hearted discussion that carries them to Mary's building and around a few blocks until Dean can find parking.

Cas starts getting stiff again as soon as he's out of the car, and by the time they reach the street door he looks a second away from bolting. Dean really hopes he doesn't, because he's had a long night and the sun's not even up yet, but he knows he'd spend hours following Cas and coaxing him back instead of going in for Christmas breakfast with his mom and Sam. He just got Cas back, he's not fucking losing him now.

Cas doesn't run. He cranes his neck up, up, up, staring up the building's facade, and says, "I hated every fucking thing about this place except the roof and your family. I would've stayed if I could, just for that. But I didn't think I could come back."

Before Dean can respond to that, which is good because it would probably be something unforgivably cheesy and he might even cry, Cas steels his shoulders and buzzes the intercom. He doesn't have to ask Dean or look up the right unit number; it hasn't changed. The lock clicks open without a word over the speaker and they ascend in silence.

Mary's waiting when they get to her hallway, standing just outside the door as light spills out from inside. Her warm, welcoming smile falters slightly as they come into view, and Dean sees the moment when her assessing gaze takes in Cas's black eye, but she pulls it back up and asks, "Who's your friend?"

Sam comes out behind her, his stupidly broad shoulders blocking out the glow of the apartment beyond, but Dean just feels the contentment in his chest grow until it's hard to breathe around the warmth.

He's eight years old and just tripped over a strange, sad, kind older boy who helped him realize how lucky he is to have his mom who tells him she loves him _every day_ even though he's ignored her.

He says, "Cas."


	2. Nothing ever smells of roses

Cas's first relapse happens on New Year's Eve.

He's been staying with Mary, because she has a guest bed in the room where Sam and Dean grew up. Because she's retired and can keep on eye on him, nurse him through withdrawals. Because he's one of her boys and she loves him despite the years and the damage. Because when he tried to leave after Christmas breakfast with a wave and _I'll see you around, maybe_ , she stopped Dean from blustering about handcuffing him to the radiator.

Dean would have done it, laws against false imprisonment notwithstanding. He's nowhere near objective when it comes to Cas, not now that he's finally got him back. Not even if it means ruining his career and his life. He knew that the moment he found Cas in lockup, and nothing's changed since then to suggest he's any more ready for logic. He jumps back and forth between wanting to force Cas to rehab, to therapy, to get better no matter what the cost in money and hatred, and wanting to give Cas anything—space, freedom, drugs, _anything_ —to keep him from running away again. That's another reason Cas is staying with Mary, and not with him.

New Year's Eve is the first time Dean of allowed to visit. Sure, it was only a few days since Christmas, but he was antsy for all of them, restless at home and bordering on distracted at work. Mary gave him updates on Cas's withdrawal symptoms, but Cas didn't want him there for it. Dean kind of understood that, even if he hated it; he wasn't sure he'd be able to handle being there.

But the end of the year get together is another Winchester tradition, so Dean arrives at his mom's apartment just before nine with a bottle of non-alcoholic cider and bright pink bakery box. The apple tarts inside are the best in Brooklyn—the best in all of New York, really—and priced accordingly. He only treats himself, and his family, once a year, and he's looking forward to sharing them with Cas, who'd loved apple pie when they were kids.

Dean hopes he still does.

Only, when Dean gets there, his mom blocks his way in with the look on her face that means she thinks she needs to stop him from doing something dumb. Over her shoulder, he can see that the door to his room—Cas's room, for now—is closed.

"Mom," he starts. but she doesn't let him finish.

"He's just having a hard day," she says, even though she looks just as tired as she was twenty years ago trying to balance work and grief and two kids. She barely slept back then, a few hours at a time at best. Just enough to keep her functional for all her responsibilities. It wasn't until they were older, Dean able to take care of himself and help out with Sammy, that he remembered what she looked like without bags under her eyes.

"What happened?"

"Trouble sleeping. Nightmares, cramps. He finally seems to be getting some rest, though."

Dean looks at the closed door again. Hesitates. "Should I go?"

Mary's smile is sweet despite her exhaustion. "He should be fine as long as we keep it quiet. You still owe me an apple tart, don't think you can get away with keeping them all to yourself."

{}

The night goes well for a few hours. Sam and Sarah show up, fancy cheeses and meats in hand. The four of them eat and chat—quietly, not wanting to wake Cas—and wait for Mary's old CRT TV to show them Times Square.

The countdown's only reached nine when Cas's door cracks and he saunters out into the living room. It hits seven by the time Dean realizes Cas is high as a kite. His pupils fill just about his entire eye, black pits shying away from the bright television screen as he wishes them a too-loud happy new year. His energy is the wrong kind of manic for someone powering through without sleep; Dean's seen and worked enough long shifts to know the difference.

He asks Cas's heartbreaking grin, "What'd you take?" as Mary gets to her feet.

"Coke. It's a party, isn't it?" He says it like it's obvious, like he's got nothing to deny or be ashamed about. Like Dean's been lying to himself, because five days of being dopesick isn't sobriety; this doesn't even count as a relapse, it's just an addict getting a fix.

"It's only been a few days," Mary echoes his thoughts quietly. "It's just a setback, that's all. You guys should go, though."

They've missed the ball dropping. It's a new year. Cas starts 2017 with powder up his nose and Dean knows what he must have done to pay for it.

"Where the fuck did you even get cocaine?" he demands, but Cas just laughs.

Dean used to adore Cas's laugh as much as he adored everything else about Cas fifteen years ago. His eyes would crinkle up and his mouth split wide to let the happy noise out. Childish giggles, in the early years, then something warmer and deeper after his voice cracked into manhood. No matter what he was laughing at, it always felt like an invitation for Dean to join in the joy.

Now it still looks the same—or as similar as it can on a grown man instead of a teenager—but the sound is a harsh, unpleasant crackle in the back of Cas's throat. It sounds like he's choking on it.

"Wherever the fuck I want. Welcome to New York, sweetheart."

{}{}{}{}{}

Things actually go pretty well after that, though. Cas still refuses to go to treatment, even outpatient, but a week passes and he doesn't use. Then another, and two more after that. He's still staying with Mary, and god only knows what a retired cop and a retired prostitute do with themselves—probably way too much daytime television—but Dean starts going over for dinner once, then twice a week, and it's nice.

It's not perfect. Cas still has a lot of bad days, and he doesn't eat with them just as often as he does. He's mostly quiet when he is there, lets Dean and Mary carry the conversation with bullshit about work and Sam and politics. But he looks better: his cheeks a little less hollow, his flesh a little less grey.

Dean tries very hard not to think about how good stubble looks on him when it's not part of an overall unbathed look. But Cas, whose sexuality has been on sale for the past eighteen years, notices. He bites his lip and stretches when he pushes back from the table, showing off an expanse of stomach that's flat instead of concave.

He smirks a challenge when Dean forces his eyes back up to Cas's face. Dean can feel the danger of the moment. He's being tested and he doesn't know the right answer, so he goes with the only one that feels safe: he flips Cas off.

"Dean Winchester!" Mary scolds, but Cas just chuckles like someday everything might be okay.

{}{}{}{}{}

It's another Tuesday and Mary smiles as she opens the door. Claiming the bags of takeout Dean was ordered to bring, she nods her head upwards and says, "He's on the roof."

{}

Dean finds him in the same spot he did almost twenty-two years ago, sitting against the far wall of the elevator housing. Dean doesn't trip over him this time, but he does stumble when Cas looks up because his lazy grin is the wrong kind of familiar. Fuck. Two and a half months, he thought... Well, hardly fucking matters what he thought.

"What'd you take?"

"Happy Valentine's Day to you too, Dean."

Cas's black eye healed a while ago. A terrible part of Dean wants to give him another, but he knows, equally terribly, that it would only encourage the dead-eyed smirk Cas aims at him. He waits it out instead.

Unfortunately, Cas waits better than he does. Maybe he's more patient in general—he always was when they were kids—but he also has the advantage of apparently being able to look up into Dean's eyes without breaking in half the way Dean does the other way around.

"I thought it was going well," says Dean, giving useless voice to his useless thought. "Why?"

Cas's unnatural smile drops off, though he doesn't look away. "Ariel sells her soul for a body she doesn't even want, on the off chance a near-stranger might be pleased and love her more like that. Only when she gets to him, he doesn't recognize her so he doesn't want her. She's already given up everything that connected her to her old life, so when he casts her aside and she tries to return to the sea, she just dissolves into foam.

"Your expectations are... exhausting, Dean."

That hits hard. More unsteady than Cas's unexpected high made him, Dean eases down to sit beside his friend and they stare out at the brownstones of Brooklyn together. Cas gives him the space to think, which is apparently more than he's been giving Cas. If asked even a few minutes ago, he would have sworn he had no expectations of Cas. But he does.

He wants Cas to get better. He has definite ideas about what _better_ means, and just about all of them relate back to the big who'd been his best friend. At their dinners, he's happy when Cas reminds him of that boy and sad when Cas reminds him of the drug-addict prostitute he pulled out of booking. Of course Cas has noticed.

Cas has a lot of shit he needs to work through, but maybe Dean does, too.

"I think I used to be in love with you, you know."

In the corner of Dean's view, Cas turns to him again and raises his eyebrows.

"Yeah. That's kind of the shit I'm talking about."

Dean meets his gaze and smiles a little, feels like he might mean it for the first time in months. "I know. What I mean is, I get that it's past tense. We're not who we used to be. I've been so used to hanging on to the idea of you that—yeah. I can see what you mean. I'll work on it."

They sit side by side for long enough that the sun, low in the sky when Dean arrived, turns the sky gold as it flirts with the horizon.

"I could blow you if you want, though."

Dean stands and offers Cas a hand up. "Not if a rattlesnake bit my dick and you were the last cocksucker in the world, sweetheart," he lies.

It's a good lie. Cas laughs instead of calling him on it, the sound closer to what it used to be but still jagged enough to ache. Dean pushes past it. No more comparisons, just Cas as he is.

"Poetic," Cas says.

{}

The food's cold when they get back. It still tastes like a new chance.


End file.
